Dawn came cold and grey.
Dante stood outside the Sector 1 entrance at 0530, thirty minutes before the Gate opened. Around him, thousands of candidates crowded the plaza, their breath fogging in the morning air. Nervous chatter filled the space with last-minute prayers and tearful goodbyes, the sounds of people who didn't know if they would ever see the sun again.
He heard it all before.
The Gate itself dominated the plaza's north end. A massive archway of dark stone that didn't belong to any architecture on Earth, carved with symbols that shifted when you looked at them too long. It stood dormant now, the space within its frame showing nothing but empty air.
In thirty minutes, that would change.
Dante found a position near the back of the crowd where he could watch without being watched. His gear bag sat heavy on his shoulders with a knife, rope, fire kit, first aid, and rations inside, a standard loadout that wouldn't draw attention.
A commotion near the front caught his ear.
"I'm telling you, we should stick together! Strength in numbers, right?"
He recognized the voice before he saw the face. Elliot Crane stood at the center of a forming group, arms spread in welcome, smile bright enough to cut through the morning gloom. Even now, even as a candidate, he was already building his network.
"My name's Elliot. I've studied the Tower for years. I know what we're walking into."
Lies. Elliot Crane didn't study anything; he networked, he charmed, and he positioned himself to take credit for others' work and blame for nothing.
"Floor 1 is a survival test," Elliot continued. "Three days to reach the exit gate. It's designed to weed out the weak. But if we work together, share resources, watch each other's backs, we all make it through."
The gathered candidates nodded, finding him reasonable and trustworthy, everything Elliot appeared to be.
None of them knew that two years from now, he sells expedition coordinates to hostile factions for profit. That four years from now, his "alliance" leaves thirty-seven climbers to die in a trap he helped set. That six years from now, he stands over Dante's dying friends and smiles.
Dante turned away. He saw enough.
---
"Hey! Dante!"
Dax broke through the crowd, waving with one hand, dragging a smaller woman behind him with the other. He looked excited and nervous, but ready.
"Told you I'd find you," Dax said. "This is my sister, Lena. She's climbing too."
Lena Dax was twenty-two, wiry, with her brother's eyes and none of his openness. She looked at Dante like he was a threat until proven otherwise.
Smart.
"Nice to meet you," Dante said.
Lena nodded but didn't offer her hand.
'She survives Floor 1. Barely. Then she quits and never climbs again. Trauma from watching her brother die.'
"So what's the plan?" Dax asked. "I heard some guy up front saying we should all team up. Safety in numbers or whatever."
"Elliot Crane," Lena said. She didn't sound impressed. "He's been making the rounds all morning. Building a little army."
"You don't trust him?"
"I don't trust anyone who works that hard to be liked."
Dante almost smiled. 'Good instincts.'
"We stay independent," he said. "Small group. Just us. We move fast, don't engage unless we have to, and reach the exit before the crowd catches up."
"You sound like you've done this before," Lena said.
"I am good at planning."
She stared at him for a long moment. Whatever she saw, it wasn't enough to make her leave.
"Fine. But if you get my brother killed, I'll find you in whatever afterlife exists and make you regret it."
"Deal."
---
The Gate opened at exactly 0600.
There was no warning and no sound. One moment there was empty air, and the next, a swirling vortex of grey light that made Dante's eyes water just looking at it. The crowd surged forward, candidates pushing and shoving to be first through.
Dante held back. Let the rush pass. Some of those people at the front would trip, get trampled, die before they even reached the first floor.
"We wait," he said.
Dax and Lena stood beside him, watching.
The crowd thinned. The desperate ones were through. Now the cautious ones approached, and the Gate pulsed steadily like a heartbeat.
"Now."
They moved.
---
The crossing felt like drowning in static.
Dante's skin buzzed. His vision fractured into colors that didn't have names. For a moment, the connection between his body and mind just... stopped. He floated in nothing, nowhere, nowhen.
Then it ended.
He stumbled onto solid ground, caught himself, and looked around.
The First Floor of the Tower stretched before him.
It was a wasteland of rocky terrain under a bruised purple sky with no sun and no moon, just diffuse light that came from everywhere and nowhere. In the distance, mountains rose like broken teeth. Closer, candidates were already spreading out, some running, some fighting over resources, some just standing frozen in shock.
Above everything, text burned in the air. Visible to all.
[FLOOR 1: THE THRESHOLD]
[OBJECTIVE: REACH THE EXIT GATE]
[TIME LIMIT: 72 HOURS]
[CURRENT SURVIVORS: 4,847]
Dante dismissed the notification and did a quick scan. Dax and Lena landed nearby, good, no immediate threats, and the terrain matched his memories.
"What the hell is this place?" Dax whispered.
"The Tower," Dante said. "Get used to it."
A scream cut through the air. Fifty meters away, a creature emerged from behind a rock formation, looking like someone tried to make a wolf out of stone and anger, with grey hide, too many legs, and a mouth that opened at unnatural angles.
'Grazer. Tier 1 beast. Pack hunter. Weak individually.'
The creature lunged at a lone candidate, and the man tried to run but wasn't fast enough.
Dante watched.
'Can't save them all. Not yet. Need to establish position first.'
Dax moved like he wanted to help. Dante caught his arm.
"You go out there, you die. He's already gone. We move."
"But..."
"He's already gone."
Dax looked at the distant figure, now pinned under the creature. Then back at Dante. Something in his eyes shifted. A little piece of innocence dying.
Good. He needed to lose more of that to survive.
"Which way?" Lena asked. Her voice was steady.
Dante pointed toward a ridge line to the east. "That direction. High ground, defensible positions, and it leads toward the exit based on the terrain flow. We move fast, we rest only when necessary, and we avoid every fight we can."
"And if we can't avoid them?"
Dante's hand rested on the knife at his belt. "Then we don't lose."
---
They moved for six hours before stopping.
The First Floor's terrain was designed to kill, with loose rocks that gave way underfoot, hidden crevices that could shatter ankles, and creatures that emerged from shadows without warning.
Dante led them around seven encounters. They hid twice, circled wide three times, and the remaining two times, there was no avoiding it.
The first creature Dante killed was a Grazer that blocked their path. It lunged. He stepped aside, let momentum carry it past, and drove his knife into the base of its skull.
Two seconds and clean.
Dax stared, but Lena didn't.
"Where did you learn to do that?"
"Self-taught."
It wasn't a lie. He taught himself in his first life. The fact that he learned it by dying over and over until he figured out the right timing was technically irrelevant.
The second kill was messier. A pair of creatures, something like insects the size of dogs, emerged from a crack in the rocks. Dante took one. Dax, to his credit, threw himself at the other.
He got cut, not deep, but enough to bleed.
"First wound," Dante said as Lena bandaged her brother's arm. "Won't be the last. How do you feel?"
Dax looked at his bloody arm, then at the creature's corpse. "Alive."
"Good answer."
---
They made camp at sunset, if the dimming of the diffuse light could be called sunset. A rocky overhang provided shelter. Dante took first watch while the others slept.
He didn't need much sleep anymore. Another thing he kept from his original timeline. The System called it [Battle-Hardened]. The ability to function on minimal rest.
The notification he waited for appeared an hour into his watch.
[FLOOR 1 PROGRESS UPDATE]
[TIME ELAPSED: 18 HOURS]
[CURRENT SURVIVORS: 3,291]
[ELIMINATED: 1,556]
One-third of the candidates were dead in less than a day, and this was Floor 1, the easiest floor, the filter.
'In the original timeline, I made it through alone. Barely. Took me all three days. This time...'
He checked his own status.
[NAME: Dante Graves]
[CLASS: IRREGULAR - UNDEFINED]
[LEVEL: 1]
[STR: 11]
[AGI: 13]
[VIT: 10]
[INT: 16]
[PER: 15]
[WIL: 19]
[SKILLS]
[Recursion - ???]
[Deja Vu - Active]
[Residual Memory - Passive]
[??? - LOCKED]
[??? - LOCKED]
[??? - LOCKED]
Stats barely above normal human with skills mostly locked. On paper, he was nothing special.
But paper didn't account for eight years of experience.
A sound made him tense. Movement in the darkness. He tracked it without moving his head.
Something was out there, watching.
Not a Grazer, since it was too quiet and too patient.
He gripped his knife and waited.
The shape emerged from the shadows. Another candidate, a young woman, wounded, her arm hanging at an unnatural angle and her eyes wild with fear.
"Please," she whispered. "They're following me. They're right behind me."
Dante stood slowly.
"Who's following you?"
"Other candidates." Her voice cracked. "They said... they said we need to eliminate competition. They're hunting people. Taking their supplies. Leaving them to die."
Dante looked past her into the darkness. Saw nothing. Heard nothing.
Either she was lying, or they were good at hiding.
'This happened in my timeline too. By day two, some candidates always turn predator. Easier to steal than to survive.'
"How many?"
"Six, maybe seven. They have weapons."
Dante considered. He could send her away. Not his problem. The girl would probably die, but that was the Tower.
Then again...
"Wake the others," he said to Lena, who was already sitting up, knife in hand. "We might have company."
The woman collapsed against the rock, breathing hard. "Thank you. Thank you."
Dante didn't answer. He was listening to the darkness, counting footsteps, calculating angles.
Six or seven. Armed but amateur. They thought they were predators.
They were about to learn otherwise.